Queens Comfort (Pt 2)

Peanut Butter & Jelly - Skippy Peanut Butter, Grape Jelly, Smoked Bacon

 

 

Mac & Cheese

 Chicken & Waffle – Tabasco Glaze, Maple Syrup, Powdered Sugar

Free-form Tamale with Smoked Pork

The Billionares Salad with Brown Sugar Bacon, Mesclun, Blue Cheese, Poached Egg, Maple Vin

Ring of Fire - Batter Fried Jalapeno & Bell Peppers, Cheddar, Sriracha Aioli (Left)

 Meatloaf Sandwich – Cheddar, Onion Rings, Bacon Ketchup (Right)

House-made Jalapeno Poppers

The Wall of Queens Comfort

In the year or so since I've first reviewed Queens Comfort, I've eaten here nearly 20 times.  It has become my go to place for brunch; when guests are in town and want something funky and fun; weekly dinners with my father who is notoriously picky but loves this place; even for Friday date night with my wife (which is appropriate because our pictures are on the wall). No matter the occasion (aside from perhaps a formal celebratory dinner), this is my place for local delicious food.  The servers seem like old friends, the chef/owner is thankful and passionate about what he serves, and they have an awesome collection of cook books for viewing.  This is a true neighborhood spot where you see the owners of other local restaurants splitting the mac and cheese and nearly every table has friends sharing a bottle of wine or a 6-pack, taking advantage of the BYOB policy, enjoying a few hours while B-movies and classic wrestling moments play on the projector screen.

They have listened to their customers feedback and incorporated change when needed.  Instead of the frozen lego, they now serve a thick fluffy homemade waffle with a tabasco glaze and the most amazing boneless fried chicken breast.  They still serve alot of the delirious southern inspired comfort food with a twist, but now they serve more Mexican food.  The owner Donnie cooks wonderful Mexican food, my favorite dish being his free-form tamale and smoked pork.  The homemade Jalapeno Poppers are the best I've ever had.  Huge, plump jalapenos with the seeds included, fried to a perfect crisp, yet not greasy at all. 

I've had most of the menu and there is not much that is not memorable and delicious.  The Disco Tots with Tater Tots, Sawmill Gravy, Cheddar are a perfect fried snack to share, rich and cream, and begging for the vinegary hot sauce.  The Billionares Salad with Brown Sugar Bacon, Mesclun, Blue Cheese, Poached Egg, Maple Vin is a fantastic spin on a cob.  The flavor is massive, its a perfect start to the meal.

The Peanut Butter, Jelly & Bacon burger is amazing!  It is not as funky as it sounds, its actually a good balance of sweet, salty and umami.  The melting Peanut Butter looks like sharp cheddar cheese but the sweetness reminds me of ketchup.  That may be my favorite burger at QC, but all of them are fantastic.  Served with a huge pile of crispy house-made shoestring french fries.  Absolutely delicious.

The other sandwiches are also worth ordering.  The house-made fresh bologna with a fried egg is excellent and has a very meaty rich flavor.  The Meatloaf Sandwich with Cheddar, Onion Rings, Bacon Ketchup is a huge mess of delicious tender meatloaf paired perfectly with the crunch of a thick Onion Ring.  Even my non onion eating father loved the crunch and taste of the ring.

I love the music they play, the prices are very affordable, the service is attentive friendly and casual, and the vibe is perfect.  This place is a real neighborhood gem, and I look forward to many more meals here.

Il Bambino

Chickpea Panzanella Salad

Marinated Sardine, Smoked Tomato and Roasted Garlic Butter, Chili Vincotto

Take out or sit down, this place is a gem for sure.  The food is simple, fresh, high quality and packed with flavor.  Its small, warm, place with attentive service and staff that always has a great attitude.  Best Panini and Crostini in Astoria for sure, maybe the best I've ever had outside of Italy.  The prices are good, the portions are big, this place is just excellent!

One of my favorite offerings is the prosciutto, fig spread and Gorgonzola Panino.  Large crunchy bread, perfectly toasted, great ratio of meat to cheese, perfect match of sweet, salty, and umami.  The Iced Latte was very good, but I would have liked it a bit stronger, perhaps another shot of espresso.  The peanut butter hot chocolate is divine!  Very peanut buttery, sweet, delicious.

On a recent visit I was impressed by the Chickpea Panzanella Salad.  Its not often I order salad, but this was an absolute winner.  Perfect balance of acid and salt, great textural contrast from the soft chickpeas to the crispy chunks of bread.  Huge portion, memorable and worth a visit.  The special of the day a Crab Crostini with crispy shallots and creamy avocado was absolutely perfect.  Loved every bite of this, amazingly flavorful yet simple Crostini.  

The food is simple but goes way beyond expectations.  This is a must try for lunch or for dinner.  Love this place!

Aroma31

 

 

This place is perfect for me, its casual, service is warm, it feels local, and most importantly they serve excellent Mediterranean food.  Everything looked so good we ended up with a 5 course meal on a recent visit!  To start the brought us pita slices with hummus, always a great start, I appreciate the complementary hummus alongside the usual free bread most places in Astoria serve.

For appetizers we had the Mac & Cheese, a simple dish served everywhere but not usual with this much class.  Excellent, huge portion of rich aldente pasta, cooked to order which is always a plus for mac and cheese.  It was so big we had trouble eating the rest of the meal.  The octopus was very good, not the best I've had, nor the softest, was a bit chewy, but a nice portion and well paired with capers and tomatoes, a change on the usual Astoria octopus.  For entrees we had the burger (one of the few items available with the voucher we had, although those conditions were certainly not printed on the voucher.....).  Really amazing thick beef patty with huge flavor.  A better burger than one from the place across the street.  Slightly undercooked, but served with a pile of fries, that were well seasoned, excellent stuff!  The dessert was one of my favorites of all time, Greek yogurt with honey and walnuts.  This item is always something I cant stop thinking about, so simple, great contrast of the tart yogurt with the sweet honey, and the crunch of the walnuts are a perfect foil to the texture of the yogurt.  So simple, so perfect!

The sangria was the only miss of the evening, just terrible, do not order it.  Very watered down, not really Sangria as much as watery cold red wine.  However it was amazingly inexpensive.  Overall excellent food, a chef that knows what he is doing, attention to detail and quality cooking overall.  Good prices too, I look forward to trying this place for brunch, highly recommended!

Ovelia

 I've eaten here many times for brunch, and its always very good.  The service in particular is excellent, they are attentive but they do not rush you.  The last time I was here with friends, they let us sit for an extended time after eating and did not try and rush us out at all.  The food is exciting and fresh.


I often have the Greek yogurt stuffed French toast, which is a great play on the more popular cream cheese stuffed French toast.  Excellent variation, great flavors, although I think I would like to try it with some jam inside also.  Its well prepared and not runny, as I might imagine stuffing bread with yogurt would be.  The sausage is interested, I'm pretty sure its lamb which I enjoy.  It's different than most breakfast sausages and the addition of what I believe are Greek spices.


One dish I think is really good and quite interesting is the feta bread sandwich with bacon and apples.  Fantastic mix of salty, sweat, savory and umami with the rich bread.  Great mix of flavors here, really fun breakfast!  The coffee is good and strong, although I would much rather fresh milk then the little milk packets.  The mugs are quite nice.


 We asked for well done hash fries and these delicious potatoes arrived, perfectly crispy with just the right amount of seasoning, great side dish.  The mimosas are strong, and the prices are decent.  Highly recommended, my favorite place for brunch in Astoria.

M Wells

(Not quite Astoria, but walking distance... Excellent food!)

 

This is a real special diner.  There are so many aspects that make it seem like a normal everyday diner, of course its set in a traditional diner building and has the classic booth and counter seats, but the food and vibe bring this place to another level.  Even the warm, motherly service you get at any diner was present here, in a hip, young kinda way.  Nice friendly attentive service.  I was very excited to try this place after all the great reviews and i must say i was very impressed.  I sat across from the flat top grill at about 11:30AM and watched the action.  This place takes classics and gives them a high class spin, such as searing a piece of Foie Gras to accompany a corn chowder, or adding a piece onto grilled cheese.  They also make alot of creative food that seem exceedingly original, such as the spaghetti sandwich which looks awesome, although heavy and greasy.  I opted for the Esgargot and Bone Marrow.  Although it was not a large plate, it was a fantastic, and had my begging for more.  I enjoyed the breadcrumbs on top also, a really rich dish i'd order again in a minute.  I opted for the soup sans Foie and I really enjoyed it but in retrospect i should have gone all the way with that soup.  The coffee was much better than normal diner coffee, it was excellent.  I took home a Cuban sandwich as i'm a sucker for pork, and i have to say it was fantastic and might have been one of the best Cubans i've ever had.  Sometimes they get dry and a bit flat on taste, but this was packed with flavor and grilled on the flat top with butter, can you get any better?  Excellent flavors, really good sandwich!  I cannot wait to return here, the baked goods looks great and very fresh.  The staff was running around prepping food and cooking, it was quite and exciting little place to eat in, highly recommended!

Pachanga Patterson

 (This picture is from a recent visit for Brunch.  Excellent value at $10 for food and a drink)

I said to a friend just 2 weeks ago that Astoria needs a modern Nuevo Mexican place, thankfully a few days latter I found this place!  It is exactly what the area needed.  The food is fresh, tasty and exciting.  I like the small menu, I don't need a million options, and it is a lot easier to keep food fresh when there are fewer options on the menu.  The staff is very friendly, casual, knowledgeable about the food.  We had the spiciest of the salsa's, the Charred Tomato & Serrano Chili. It was good, although not quite as strong, or spicy as I would have liked.  The chips were fried fresh and a bit on the thick side, which I like.  Their house hot sauce was way to mild.

To start we ordered the Mussels which we did not enjoy very much.  They were just OK, the taste was a bit flat, under seasoned.  It could have used something to sharpen the flavor, perhaps citrus, or vinegar or just more salt.  Both my company and myself did not enjoy this very much, although we did not return it.

The entrees were very good.  I had the Roasted Pork Belly Enchilada, chocolate, fig & peanut sauce, cumin crema which were excellent!  The pork belly itself was cooked well, although not falling apart it had a good texture.  The sauce, chocolate, figs and peanuts were a wonderful balance to the pork, I really enjoyed the flavor combination and the crunch of the peanuts.  Great dish!  The fish taco's are excellent also, good portion of well fried fish.  Very tasty and not greasy.

For dessert I had the cold fruit soup with whipped cream.  It was alright, tasted more like a fruit salad, the actual broth was not memorable, however it was tasty and a great cool refreshing end to the meal.

I'm looking forward to returning to try the Duck and the Pork tacos.  Chips and salsa are not complementary, and neither are side dishes, which may push the price a few dollars higher than I would normally spend for Mexican food.  It is worth it for the food and the great outside sitting area.

Brick Cafe

Good food, great atmosphere nice staff, however the food was not great.  The food was exciting on the menu, but somewhat disappointing on arrival.  The bread was not fresh and while it still tasted good, i would have perfected it reheated/baked slightly instead of the the cold somewhat chewy bread we got.  It did come with a good olive mixture.

I started with a salt cod (Bacalao) over polenta.  This was very good, the highlight of the few dishes i tried.  They removed almost of the salt, very nicely done.  It was in a pile, broken up almost like crab.  They could have done alot more with the flavor, but the fish was excellent and went well with strips of grilled polenta.  Very large portion, nearly the size of an entree.  My fiance had the prosciutto and mellow which was good, but instead of wrapping the melon in prosciutto they just piled it on top it, kinda strange.  People at my table said the Onion soup was not very good.

For the main course I had the veal cannelloni which was strange.  2 large cannelloni with a veal and cheesy type filling.  There appeared to be 2 sauces, a Béchamel, which was way to thin, and a brown sauce that might have been drippings from the meat.  It was almost sour like they used vinegar, i did not love it.  There was something a bit off about the taste.  Overall a ok dish.

My fiance had the Gnocchi in Gorgonzola sauce.  This was a big disappointment.  The sauce was weak, and a poor match to the bland Gnocchi.  It did have a very nice texture, to often from restaurants its gooey and mushy, this Gnocchi had a bite to it.  Aside from it being a bland dish with thin sauce, there was no color variation at all and no herbs added.  Off white pasta on a white plate with off white sauce.  Very boring and kind of shocking they would serve it like that.  Jazz it up!

Over all the food was decent but lacking something.  it is also too expensive for the quality of food, although to portions are big.  It is very cute and you can eat outside.  They do have a nice menu with many options, so i might be have to try something else.   Slightly recommended.